SINGAPORE — The number of Covid-19 patients who are in serious condition and need oxygen support to help them breathe has dropped to 26 on Wednesday (Aug 18), down from 30 the day before.

This is the second day in a row that the number of such patients has dipped.

The number of patients under intensive care remains at six over the two days, data from the Ministry of Health (MOH) showed.

Among these six patients under intensive care and the 26 with serious illness, seven are fully vaccinated.

Of those who have fallen very ill, 27 are aged above 60, of whom 22 are not vaccinated or partially vaccinated, MOH said.

It stressed that there is continuing evidence that “almost all fully vaccinated individuals do not suffer serious disease when infected unless they had underlying medical conditions that made them more susceptible”.

“Over the last 28 days, the percentage of unvaccinated who became severely ill or died is 8.8 per cent, while that for the fully vaccinated is 1.5 per cent,” it added.

There are 402 Covid-19 patients who are hospitalised as of Wednesday.

CASES AT JURONG WEST HOUSING BLOCK

In a separate statement, MOH said that six cases of coronavirus infections were detected among residents at Block 695 Jurong West Central 1, while 480 people tested negative for the disease.

This was after it completed testing operations at various public housing blocks across Singapore.

All of the people, including shopkeepers and cleaning workers, tested at Blocks 52 and 53 Chin Swee Road, as well as Blocks 3 and 9 Jalan Kukoh and the Jalan Kukoh Food Centre, did not have Covid-19.   

NEW CLUSTER

There was one new Covid-19 cluster linked to an individual, while seven other clusters have been closed.

There are now 87 active clusters here, each having between three and 1,155 cases.

Earlier in the day, MOH said that Singapore recorded 49 new locally transmitted cases, including 19 that are not linked to earlier reported infections.

For the 30 cases linked to confirmed cases, 23 had already been placed under quarantine and another seven were detected through surveillance testing.

Among the cases is one senior aged above 70 who is not vaccinated and is at risk of serious illness, MOH said.

In addition, there are four imported cases, making it a total of 53 new Covid-19 cases confirmed on Wednesday.

Three of the imported cases were detected on arrival in Singapore and the remaining one developed the illness during stay-home notice or in isolation.

Overall, the number of new cases in the community has dropped from 448 in the week before to 316 in the past week.

The number of cases with no known links in the community has also gone down from 125 in the week before to 94 in the past week.

The seven-day moving average number of all linked community cases and all unlinked community cases are 31.7 and 13.4 respectively.

The total number of Covid-19 cases in Singapore is now 66,334.

VACCINATIONS

As of Aug 17, 77 per cent of the population had completed their full regimen or received two doses of Covid-19 vaccines, and 82 per cent had received at least one dose.

For other vaccines recognised in the World Health Organization’s Emergency Use Listing such as Sinovac, 153,020 doses had been administered as of Aug 17, covering 84,172 individuals.